


The Five Contemplations of Family, Winchester Style + Bonus

by orange_8_hands



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 5 Things, Abandonment, Anger, Angst, Angst Dean Winchester, Betrayal, Daddy Issues, F/M, Family, Family Secrets, Gen, Hunting, Lies, M/M, Mommy Issues, POV Second Person, Superheroes, Wordcount: 5.000-10.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-15
Updated: 2012-01-15
Packaged: 2017-10-29 14:13:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/320784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orange_8_hands/pseuds/orange_8_hands
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is what family means, this is what family feels like</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Mother

You don't actually remember your mother, whatever you pretend. You did not watch her burn, not like your father, not like your brother, and the bitter image of her open mouth screaming and blond hair is just that, an image, your imagination, a realistic nightmare because you have spent your life killing, your life burning, so at least you know what flames engulfing your mother's skin looks like.

You tell your brother to shut it, always do, when he asks you questions about her, when he mentions her, voice so casual, voice so fucking unemotional you tell him to shut it because if you actually answer, if you actually try to answer your secret's out - you were fucking _four_ , the only memories you have of her are things your dad would slip out, words slurring across your face and the heavy weight of grief across your shoulders. You remember silence and you remember screaming and you remember the chant for Mary, the chant for mom, it must have been you who made those noises, must have been, but your first real memory is your dad carefully guiding your hands over metal, over the first of the illegal guns he buys and telling you _careful, son, careful_ as his finger over yours gently, gently squeezes the trigger, lets you feel the power, lets your hands ache as he tells you _this is for your mother, this will be for Mary._

When you're fifteen you finally listen to the song "Hey Jude," listen to the lyrics until you can sing them all, listen to the beat until you become sure you could play it on any instrument you are handed, even though you've never picked up a guitar, never picked up drumsticks or ran your fingers over piano keys, music was never going to be your escape from this life, you were never going to escape this life. When you finally realize, when you finally admit you keep listening to this song because you think you will hear your mother's voice, finally get her voice to whisper in your head and you swallow hard because it won't, burned up on your brother's ceiling, you smash the Walkman, lie to your brother when he asks why its in pieces and you won't try to fix it, _I thought you had magic hands, Dean_ he says, but even you can't create your mother's voice out of eleven years of silence. It becomes another strike against you, in your brother's head, you know it does, _reckless_ and _selfish_ and _jerk_ top your brother's list but you don't know how to explain missing something you once had and can't remember, explain the full-body ache when you see mother's day cards and family pictures. Sometimes, sometimes there's the briefest flash of blonde hair, the smell of tomato soup, and you can remember burrowing into a large stomach and soft hands cradling your head and you think, you think maybe you're not making it up, but you can't, you can just never be sure. 

You eat pie because you enjoy it, because it tastes good and in the landscape of your childhood, dotted across ribbons of black and yellow lines are diners that serve it, but honestly you eat it because that's as close as you can get to your mother, that's as close as you know how to bring the feel of her hugs back to you. Your father doesn't eat pie for just that reason, brows always crinkled when you order it, when you ask for it, so you try to share it with Sammy, apple and peach and cherry, _it has fruit_ you say because Sammy cares about that, since that school in California or Nebraska or wherever, he complains about the food you steal like junk food is going to be the reason any of you die, like any of you will live long enough for clogged arteries and diabetes to matter. _Enjoy it, bitch_ , you tell him when he makes faces, when he tells you about sugar content for fuck's sake, and you can't say it's about mom, you can't say it’s the only way you know how to share her, and you are hollowed out because for Sam she will always be the reason he can't stay a full year of school in one place, or play soccer with his legs running like he could go forever, she will just be _my mom died when I was a baby_ with no hint of what that means coloring his voice, no clue beyond the distant love he feels for what could have been and the undefined resentment he can't untangle. It will never be a lump in his throat too big to swallow down, or a stone trying to sink his insides into his bones, it will never be a whiskey bottle that can never be full enough or a hatred so strong you can keep hunting twenty years, that can have you dragging your kids across state lines and into nightmares, into reality. A mother is an abstract concept to him and always will be, a word that can be attached to death as easy as anything else, something to throw in your father's face, in your face because you had it and he never did, the trump card, the fourth ace in the biggest stakes poker game you can imagine. You eat pie because as much as you have forgotten mom is not an abstract, was someone who tucked you in, was someone who promised angels would watch over you. You eat pie because you never got a chance to know her through anything but your father's drunken sobs. You eat pie and you offer it to Sammy and Sammy never gets this is the only way you know how to give him mom, and you know you won't offer it to anyone else, can't because the only one you need to introduce your mother to is your brother. 

You do not what if. Not since you were sixteen, at least, not since you dropped out of school have you thought about could-have-beens or possibilities or missed chances. Your mother is dead, will only ever be dead, and if your most obvious secret is what you'd do to change that, to make that untrue, you aren't stupid enough to think it matters. Your mother is five facts you hoard too tight and a safety you don't believe in. Your mother is a few pictures and the reason for your life, in every sense of the word. Your mother is everything, and you...sometimes you’re glad she will never see what you are.


	2. Brother

For all that it would make other families proud, for all it would make you the golden child, the instinctual smile and gloating words to neighbors, in this family it makes you a secret, makes you weak, makes you a burden seen in the throbbing of your father's neck and the crease of worry behind your brother's bravado. Sometimes Dean watches you, when he thinks you don't realize, when he thinks he's being sly, he watches you, neck bent over paper and books, hands writing cramped notes for essays you will bribe your brother to take you to school early enough to finish, so you can type them up and turn them in and receive the A, receive the small smile the strict teacher bestows on only the best written. He watches you and you can feel his gaze like a laser on your hands, like a root of tangled love and hate growing in your gut, like a target on your back.

Your brother used to steal you notebooks, used to grab pens from a thousand motel clerks and highlighters from any store that sold them, used to steal you post it notes and paperclips and once staples, even though you never owned a stapler. He would present half of them to your father, to use to keep track of hunts and lore and contacts (never friends), but you were not and never have been stupid; he stole them for you, so you would smile, so you would happily crack open your deteriorating textbooks and borrowed (you always tried to return them, always planned to) library books, tell him about the solar system, about Montana Colorado Utah South Carolina state history, about fractions and dinosaurs and pirates. Whatever caught your attention you turned to like a plant finally placed in sunlight, you soaked like a sponge and rung it out against your brother, because even when he ignored you or called you Princess or Samasaur or geek-boy, even when it seemed like every day he had a new nickname to try against your tear ducts, you always knew beyond the music and the cars and the girls and the pop culture addiction he sucked down like cotton candy, beyond all of that you would always have your brother's attention first. Your brother's eyes tracking you and your brother's hands punching you just this side of hard on your always-growing shoulders, your brother's mouth as he’d spit out insults and taunts and _Sammy_ , Sammy even when you insisted on Sam you were Sammy, your brother's attention would never waver, not the way your father's did. You may not have agreed but that's not why you started talking back to him, that's not why you started learning how to trip across all of his buttons. You did not have your father's full attention until he learned, until his lips would curl over having to announce the next move, the next hunt, because he knew you would have something to say, because he knew you would make a fuss about leaving.

It had been anger on your father's face and slick desperation in your brother's eyes when you left that final time, when you walked out that door - not even yours, just some motel's, one of a hundred, one of a thousand you spent your life in, the closest thing you can claim as home is a car your brother declared before you even knew you wanted to get away from them - but neither had been surprised, neither had wondered how long you had been planning to run, neither were stupid men when it came to leaving fast, before the smoke cleared and the credit card bounced.

 _Again_ , your brother's eyes say, mouth flattened and jaw tight. Again because you both know this isn't the first time you have left this family, this isn't the first time you tried to taste freedom away from them, there will never be a tight enough grasp to keep you tethered to their world, no matter how many strings they try to wrap around your neck. You wondered once if your brother would leave with you, if you asked if your brother would go with you, but that was fourteen towns and two years ago, and there is a slick curl of malicious pleasure with the idea of never seeing him again, his _yes, sirs_ a noose you will not die on.

He drops you off at the bus station and leaves before you fully shut the door, music still pounding inside your head over any chance you had to say one last word to him, and you wrestle down the piece of you that wished for a better goodbye, a better parting. Your brother heads back to your father and you buy a bus ticket to your new life, and if you still thrum with anger at your father's last words to you, if you shake just slightly at the enormity of being completely on your own without a phone call to fall back on...you hide it, because you know California will be better than this, and never going back to them seems like a small price to pay.


	3. Father

When you explain your father is a superhero, when you tell your little brother your father is better than Batman, you believe it, you believe it even when he just looks at you, even when he just contemplates you, just disbelieves you, just doubts you, even when he curls away from your honesty and the weight of your hand. You tell him _our father is a superhero_ but you don't mean it like other kids, you don't mean just to you, you don't mean it because he lifts you up and flies you around, your father doesn't do that, your father doesn't hug, your father saves the world. 

You father teaches you guns, your father teaches you lore, your father teaches you salt and holy water and iron and knives, your father teaches you fists and charm and fake IDs, your father teaches you research and running and how to drive, and your father - for all he forgets his own lessons later on - teaches you your brother. Your father is a superhero because your father saves lives, your father gathers facts and follows clues and hunts down what your classmates would call fairy tales, call ghost stories, if they even recognized the name. He teaches you weapons and he teaches you discipline and he teaches you family, and your father is a superhero and your father thinks you can be one too.  

Your father is a superhero, and he teaches you until you can be first defense, he teaches you even after you fail your biggest purpose, teaches you violence and patterns and reality, and then your father takes you with him, your father trusts you behind him. Your father is a superhero and your father is training you to be one too, and finally one day you realize prom, you realize teachers, you realize this is who your father is saving and this is who your father thinks you can save too, and you think now, you think now you'll finally get the secret, now you'll finally be told about the biggest hunt of all, you'll finally be a superhero too.

Your brother, for all you called him geek boy and nerd dude and dork king, for all he once stole your comic books and smudged the pages when he read them, your brother does not get it, your brother does not care, your brother does not understand how the superhero business works. Your brother does not understand normal is just your secret identity and normal is not for people who have your knowledge. And you think, you always think he'll get his moment too, he'll have his little click too, but your brother keeps leaving and never stops to see, your father is a superhero and you’re trying to be one too.

Your father is a superhero but he will not tell you more, he will not share what he knows about his arch nemesis and you slowly come to realize your father is a superhero but he's not training you to be one too, he never thought you could be one too, and every superhero has a costume and every superhero has a sidekick and you slowly start to realize, you slowly start to see, he never planned to take you with him. 

Your brother leaves and your father leaves and you stand there in the motel, you stand there with your cape in tatters and falling down around your knees, you stand there with the rips and tears as it unravels, and you realize the superhero is always alone, and you realize what you never saw before. 

Just because you have the cool car doesn't mean you were ever going to be in this story at all.


	4. Lover

You miss Ruby, and you'll never tell your brother. You didn't think you ever trusted her beyond her sincere desire to kill Lilith, and hey, score a point for yourself there, but you didn't think you ever trusted her and since she's dead you're starting to think you may have. You must have, at one point, you must have trusted her, it wasn't all the demon blood you must have thought there was something there because you still find yourself thinking, you still find yourself half turning, Ruby will know, Ruby will help. You must have trusted her at one point because betrayal can't feel this bad if there was nothing to betray.

You wonder what Jess would say. In your heart of hearts you wonder if the fantasy of college sweethearts would have lasted. You hid so much from her and you thought, you give yourself the kindness of thinking it was for her sake. No one should have to know this, no one should have to think about exorcisms and gun care, no one should have to know how to use a knife and hustle a pool game, no one should have a dad point a shotgun at your closet to get the monster you shouldn't know exists, and you did to her what you wished Dean and your father had been able to keep doing for you - you lie, you lie and laugh at the idea of a ghost in her friend’s apartment building and you ignore the printings about dog attacks in the school newspaper. You lie and you know you two never really had a shot, and only part of that was because she was brought into your life to die, to flick the switch your father tried to instill in you and become a hunter, her fire was the spark that lit the anger your father breed into your bones. Any woman you met before Ruby - you think fleetingly of Sarah, you think longer about Madison - was never going to make it, and you are too tainted for any woman after her. You wonder if your life is destined to follow your brother's, one night stands and charming smiles and see-through lies and loneliness so deep you think it could fill a hole drilled from one side of the earth to another, you think if you survive this is what's left to you, but you wonder, you can look at your brother and wonder now, if that's really how it will end for him.

You weren't there, in the beginning, for their first few steps. You weren't there, or if you were there you didn't care enough to focus, you didn't care enough to see, you didn't think anything beyond Lilith was important, and so you missed the first greeting, you missed the first threats and you missed the complete dismissal of each other. You remember meeting him and the way he hesitated, the way your hand just hung there, and you got what your brother meant when he called them dicks with wings, you got what he meant when he said there wasn't a difference between them, you got what he meant when he said fuck them, your brother was never subtle and you got his message just fine, don't trust the angels.

Your brother swings a tire iron at his tormentor and you don't think much about it, simply good business practice, revenge was a blue print you were following, and you don't think why he didn't wait until he killed the angel, took care of the problem and give you more room to move. He dismisses Jimmy with a handshake and a casual _whatever_ , he gets snatched away without your permission by the fuckers, and you never really saw, you were never really there to catch him watching.

Your brother is broken and the angel is falling and they snarl, bitterness a mangy bone between them, and it is always you who reaches for Cas first when he is hurt, always you who checks how far into human behavior he has picked up, how deep his injuries come to this round. You are watching the angel fall and you are watching your brother hallow out, cave inward, and even when you are watching it takes you surprisingly long to realize, it takes you much too long to understand, the angel isn't just here for humanity and your brother isn't just here for you. 

You think about Gordon, you think how close it was, how close your brother came to agreeing, to believing, and your biggest grace, your biggest save from Dean tumbling after him was the way he still followed where you lead. You have your brother first, you have always had his biggest concern be you, but you're realizing, you're realizing as you watch them this isn't some strange version of lust and it isn't even liking and it isn't just one of them using eyesight like fucking, meeting eyes like challenge and promise and the tension between them is thicker than thunder, thicker than the ocean, it isn't any of that because sometimes Cas grabs his shoulder, grabs the hand print you have only been reluctantly shown once, and you're starting to think the apocalypse is just the background movie to this, of whatever this could become. You think, you think they are both too brittle and they are both too angry and they are both too doubtful to ever make the move, to ever fill that small last separate inch between them, and yet you think, you think this is an angel from heaven and this is your brother, and when they catch each other's eyes you think maybe, just maybe, that's enough.


	5. These Are My Sons, Look at Them Grow

Your problem has always been you were too little, too late, and if that applies to every one of your sons at least it applied differently.

You think you never really had a chance with any of them, not after the fire tore through Mary, not after you went to Missouri and learned the truth. Your eldest grew up too fast and your middle didn't grow up fast enough and you really weren't around to say how your youngest did. You think if you can find the right words, if you can just explain your mistakes were never on purpose, your mistakes were never meant to be forgiven, one of them might find comfort, might find pride in what you gave their lives to do. The demon gives you an hour and you think if you can say what needs being said to your eldest it will somehow trickle down to the other two, even if he only knows one of them, has only spent his life watching one of them. You think if you can just say the perfect combination of words he'll realize you would do this, you would do this again and again and again, because you love him, you love all three, and you were just never that good at showing it. You think, you think this is your moment, but you learned duty young and hunting only honed it, hunting only focused it, and even as you tell your eldest what he needs to hear you can't leave without warning him, you can't leave without him realizing what duty may make him do, and you aren't stupid but you think that may have just been the stupidest fucking thing you could do to him.

You never really had a chance with any of them, not after the fire tore through Mary, not after you went to Missouri and learned the truth. Your middle son is a boulder, is a mountain, is a rock you have to hammer into shape. It's not that he doesn't understand what's out there, it's not that he doesn't believe what's waiting in the shadows, in the daylight, it's that you can never quite get him to care, to prioritize it over the rest. He stand there at ten, he stands there at fifteen, he stands there at eighteen and claims all he wants is normal, all he wants is one chance at normal, all he wants is to last five minutes in one place. But you are a soldier, you were a soldier in a jungle and now you're one in a demon's playground, and you know the only time you stay still is when they're looking for movement. He stands there at every age and whines and begs and yells and pleads, he stands there and asks and tells and curses, and you think _I'm doing this for you, it's always been as much about you as Mary_. You may be a harsh taskmaster but you are not cruel, and you swallow the words, because for now - and you check, sometimes you add holy water to his drinks, sometimes you have him practice saying Latin words so you can see if he flinches at his own Christo - he is just a boy, just your son, and you want to keep him that way. It's not that you didn't mean your ultimatum at the time; it's that you didn't think he'd take it, didn't think he could drop family when you've spent his whole life teaching him family was all he had, all he needed. You didn't think he'd walk out that door and maybe it was pride that kept you silent, maybe it was always pride that kept you from trying to reach out once more, but the first time you came across the pattern you swallowed it and sent his brother, sent them both to protect each other while you hunted this thing down, while you finally got rid of the baggage and caught the clues and traced the patterns. You never got a chance to have him back, but you gave him his brother, and he was always more Dean's than yours anyway. 

It's just, you never had a chance with any of them, not after the fire tore through Mary, not after you went to Missouri and learned the truth. You got the third one, you made your youngest because of this, because of this life, and yeah, he was a mistake, yeah he wasn't something that you needed, but you also thought maybe, you also thought maybe this time you'll get it right, and you kept your visits to once, sometimes twice a year, because as every hunter was happy to tell you, you brought everyone down around you, you brought blood and knives and guts and guns to every one around you, and the only way you could keep this one safe without taking him from his mother and thrusting him into the life cracking his brothers open was to keep your involvement minimal. You take him to baseball games and you take him for rides in the Impala and every three months, every sixth months or, well, you try for once a year, you hug him hello and you hug him goodbye and you think maybe, you think maybe this one.

It's just, you never had a chance with any of them, but that never meant you didn't love them.


	6. Hunting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This ch. makes a lot more sense if you've seen 4.3 "In the Beginning," 5.14 "My Bloody Valentine," and 5.16 "Dark Side of the Moon."

  
You fight with John and you don't understand, you never got how who can love him like your skin breathes air, you can love him beyond all reason, you can love him with everything and you can know on every level he feels the same, you can love him more than a thousand metaphors and a million similes, he is what you've always wanted out of life, he is what you turned your life into, and yet still, still you fight, still you tell him _get out_ , still you think you can hate him.

When you were twelve you were given a gun and maps and a shovel and salt and pointed in one direction and told _go, go Mary, you can do this_ , and your mom just watched your father drop you off to learn this life or die trying, your first ghost, your first hunt, all by yourself, and you watched your mom watch you walk out the door and maybe never come back and you thought _never_ , you promised _never_. You go on your first hunt and you survive and you think about your friends and a basement full of knives and it has to be better, it can't not be better on the other side, how can grass not soaked in blood be worse than this? You are going to leave hunting and you decide this on your first hunt, you decide this when your father drops you off and says no, tells you no when you beg, when you plead, your pride is gone, you just want to go home, you aren’t ready for this and don’t think you should have to be. You decide as you watch your father drive away and leave you with a gun and maps and a shovel and salt that you can live, you can live quite nicely with the knowledge of someone dying because you didn't stop a ghost, didn't stop a werewolf, didn't stop a vampire in time. You discover as you walk back home, hours later, body sore and arm broken and head aching, you make a deal with yourself and say fine, let them die, it's not your responsibility just because you know what's out there, it's not on you just because monsters are real and you've seen them with your own eyes.

You meet John and it makes sense even though it really doesn't, it makes sense how much you love him, how much you adore him, he's not the reason you finally tell your dad you're done, it's not the reason you finally tell your parents good-bye, but he's a good one, it makes sense how much you love him, except it really doesn't. He's a soldier and mechanic and nice man, solid values and sense of duty, he is a Kansas son and when he kisses you your skin hums, your body thrums, it makes sense how easily you can tell him forever, how easy it is not to look back, it makes perfect sense except for how, when you look just a little too hard, when think about it just a little too long, you think you can see the seams. You love him and you lean into him and you learn him, learn him from the ground up, learn what makes him John, you love him so much and even if you can't tell him all of it, even if you can't tell him about being twelve and being thrown into gravestones, even if you can't tell him that you can tell him the rest and you do, together you make perfect sense, and if you don't that's just part of the deal you made with yourself, you gave up hunting and it's not your job to look at cracks any more.

You tell Dean, cuddling into you, face pressed against your side, you tell Dean and you tell the baby growing inside of you, you tell Sam, named after your father, you tell your children named after your parents because that's what daughters who are grieving do in your new life, that's how normal people show how much they miss their parents, you tell your child and you tell your baby _angels are watching over you_. Just because you stopped hunting doesn't mean you forgot knowing, and you can name the monsters out there, salivating over humans, you can taste the ash of your father/not-father and the deal you made, because you love John more than life more than your sons and it makes sense except for how it really doesn't, you can remember all of this and so you tell your sons, you tell Dean and you tell Sam _angels are watching over you_. You tell your children, because this is what mothers do who don't know what's out there, you tell your sons _angels are watching over you_ , you tell them as you tuck them in at night, and it won't be the only lie you tell them, it won't even be your first.


End file.
